


the raven instruments

by elliptical



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater, Shadowhunters (TV), The Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Crack, Crossover, Fluff, Humor, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 15:39:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10363845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elliptical/pseuds/elliptical
Summary: A group of liberal Shadowhunters from the Henrietta Institute visit the New York Institute and proceed to teach them about polyamory.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is an EXTREMELY SILLY FIC i wrote a few months back as a christmas gift for one of my gfs  
> it has been brought to my attention that "ridiculous parabatai au" is a thing some people besides my gfs want  
> therefore here it is

The Shadowhunters visiting the New York City Institute are a strange bunch. They orient around each other like they’re somehow all parabatai, curious enough in their interactions and casual affection for Clary to mutter around trying to find out about their interpersonal relationships. (And then for Isabelle to walk up to all five of them and ask straight out, because Isabelle has no sense of propriety whatsoever, and likes having her curiosity sated.)

Ronan and Gansey are parabatai, they explain. Blue and Adam are parabatai as well; they’d tried dating first, in their earlier teens, before realizing that wasn’t the connection they had. Everyone gets sort of quiet when it comes to introducing Noah, at which point Jace says, “You act like most Shadowhunters pair off as soon as they’re old enough to walk, who cares if he doesn’t have a parabatai?” and Blue says, “His parabatai died,” and Jace says, “Oh,” and Clary says, “Please excuse my fiance, who has a debilitating case of foot-in-mouth syndrome.”

Maryse had muttered something about small town institutes, although when Alec asked her to repeat herself, she’d just waved a hand and said, “Nothing.” Ronan’s ears are ever-so-slightly pointed, and he’s done nothing with hair or fashion to hide it, apparently unconcerned about potential discrimination. It makes enough sense - the fey are more common in small towns surrounded by nature than in the iron heart of the city - but the way he doesn’t care at all is curious. Blue, the other not-fully-Shadowhunter part of the pack, doesn’t have a warlock mark anywhere visible. But Magnus takes one look at her, inhales as dramatically as possible, and says, “Aha. Demon blood.”

Blue stares back at him, expressionless. “Aha,” she says. “Abysmal fashion taste.”

Alec has to soothe Magnus’ ruffled feathers for a solid half hour.

\---

Ronan trains with Isabelle, the two of them sparring until their chests heave and their skin glistens with sweat. He can hold his own and then some; he doesn’t keep himself back because Isabelle is a woman, which makes her like him that much more. There’s an eerie grace in the way he does things that’s all fey, although the form and fighting moves he uses are definitely Shadowhunter. Isabelle feints weakness once when he pins her, and then as soon as his guard is down, surges upward and shoves him down on the training room floor.

“So,” she says, straddling him, hands splayed on his chest, “faery, huh?”

“You’re dating a vampire,” Ronan points out.

“I know, I know. I’m just really curious about how all that works.”

“There’s plenty of Shadowhunters with traces of fey blood.” Ronan smiles at her, and it would be innocent if not for the sheer number of too-pointy teeth he’s showing. “Doesn’t affect us at all.”

“Like hell it doesn’t.” Isabelle gets to her feet, offering a hand, which Ronan pointedly ignores as he pulls himself up.

“I don’t make a habit of discussing everything I do with everyone I meet,” he says. “Especially not big city Shadowhunters who think they’ve got it all figured out because they jack off to blood purity.”

“Wow.” Isabelle watches him for a moment, and then grins, holding out a closed fist. “Respect.”

Ronan watches her back, and something guarded and wary melts away from his expression. He rolls his eyes, which he somehow manages to make into an entire theatrical display, and bumps her knuckles.

“I learned that from Simon,” Isabelle says.

“And I’m sure he’s very proud of you.” Ronan rolls his eyes again. “Rematch?”

\---

Magnus touches Blue’s hand and makes a noise like he’s been shocked. Except the kind of shock where you suddenly discover it’s more fun than expected, and kind of want to do it again, except you’re not sure if asking would be weird. Alec is not sure where this metaphor came from, because it’s definitely not something he’s thinking about from personal experience, at all.

Blue stares at Magnus with the same sort of deadpan passivity she always seems to adopt. Magnus says, “Your magic’s got a little bit of a kick to it.”

“I don’t have magic.” Blue examines her fingernails. They’re ragged around the edges, like she’s never seen a nail file in her entire life, but she’s acting like she’s inspecting a manicure for deep flaws. “Maybe you’re just attracted to me.”

Alec makes a sound like a cat coughing up a hairball. Magnus pats him on the back and says, “No, you definitely have magic.”

Blue is silent for a few more seconds, letting the awkwardness grow, and then takes pity on both of them. “I amplify other people’s magic.”

Magnus blinks. “Oh,” he says after a moment. “My magic’s got a bit of a kick to it.” Another blink, and then he turns to Alec. “Is that what it feels like when we -? No wonder you-”

“All right, well, I’m going to go be literally anywhere else, so,” Blue says, and doesn’t even offer a proper farewell as she walks out of the room.

\---

“So, like.” Jace hangs upside down from the bars in the training room, his hair going every which way as gravity tugs on it. “The whole part-warlock Shadowhunter thing. I’m curious. Is there ever an internal war type thing going on, or…”

Blue doesn’t respond, fiddling with the knife she just took out of the rack. Gansey, standing beside her, gives Jace a pitying look. It is a look that says, _I have stood where you are, and I am watching you dig your own grave._

“I don’t mean it offensively or anything,” Jace adds, flipping upright. “It’s just once I thought I had demon blood in me and it turned into this whole _thing._ You would not believe the angst capabilities people have when they’re contemplating their true natures. The existential crisis of a seventeen-year-old is a force to be reckoned with. I daresay it’s a force on par with the energy it takes to open a door into the demon realms themselves. Who needs all this research, let’s just harness the psychological issues of teenagers-”

Blue looks past him, toward Clary, who’s sitting against the wall of the training room with a book she clearly isn’t reading. “Do you always just let him talk like this?”

Clary’s watching the scene and shaking with suppressed laughter. “Only when it’s funny.”

Blue makes an expansive, exasperated gesture. “What do you see in him?”

“Wow!” Jace looks even more offended than Magnus did when she insulted his fashion taste. “Rude!”

“You’re going to burn bridges with literally every Shadowhunter and Downworlder in New York, aren’t you?” Gansey murmurs.

“Don’t be silly. I can finish that before Tuesday. I intend to throw in a few mundanes too.”

Gansey gives Blue a look like she is a shimmering oasis in the midst of a scorching desert, and he hasn’t had water in five days. It is the kind of adoring look Clary catches Jace throwing at her when he thinks she isn’t looking, and there’s a tender intimacy in it that’s somehow more private than catching the two of them having sex.

“I ask one question,” Jace says, “and this is what I get.”

“She does have the occasional existential crisis,” Gansey offers, “but mostly the whole warlock-Shadowhunter thing just comes through in her personality.”

Blue throws her knife at his head. (He ducks with the ease of someone used to having knives thrown at his head. Apparently throwing knives at Gansey’s head is an inside joke.)

\---

The first time Adam disarms Alec and shoves him to the floor of the training room, knife at his throat, Alec suddenly has to contend with the fact that he has a crush. He hasn’t had a real crush in a long time, since before dating Magnus. The sudden butterflies are a weird sensation. If there is a God, Adam won’t notice; but then, if there was a God, Alec wouldn’t be contending with his first crush in three years while held down on a floor with said crush in close enough proximity to kiss.

Adam doesn’t notice, or if he does, he has the good grace not to say anything. He rolls off Alec and tucks the knife away, savagely pleased with himself. “Take that.”

“Well fought,” Alec says.

Someone clears their throat. “Not bad, Parrish,” Ronan says from the entrance to the room, his arms folded over his chest. “You might be able to beat me someday.”

“Fight me,” Adam says.

“I literally will.”

“Come at me.”

Ronan walks over with his dancer’s grace, leans down, and kisses Adam on the mouth. Adam wraps an arm around Ronan and knots a hand into his hair, and then bites down on Ronan’s lip so hard that Ronan groans, and then pulls back grinning with red smeared over his teeth. “First blood.”

Alec buries his face in his hands. “I am right here.”

“So you are,” Adam says. 

“You have a boner,” Ronan observes, with clinically detached interest.

Alec considers faking his death and making a new life for himself in Guatemala.

\---

Clary’s the first one to see Blue’s more tender side, and that’s because she walks in on a moment she isn’t supposed to view in the first place. Blue is curled up under an absurdly large pile of blankets in her guest room with Noah beside her, nothing visible of him save a mop of curly hair and half of his face poking out from the mound. Clary’s meant to drop off a load of laundry done courtesy of the Institute, and she’s about to back out of the room and just leave the clothes outside where Blue will find them later, except then she hears Blue say, “He was trying to kill you.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Noah mumbles, his voice so soft that Clary wouldn’t be able to pick it up if she wasn’t sporting a sharpened hearing rune.

She’s more curious than anything - she doesn’t actually believe it has anything to do with New York City, since for once there aren’t any missing Shadowhunters or signs of unraveling conspiracies here - but she tells herself that she’s eavesdropping for the sake of safety. It’s totally ethical.

“Noah,” Blue tells him, her own voice matching his softness, “you have to start moving on from this. There’s normal grief, and then there’s - this is making you sick.”

“I felt him die.” The blanket mound shifts as Noah wiggles closer to her. “Our bond, I felt it breaking, I felt him bleeding out under my hands, I felt how much breathing hurt for him - the iratzes kept fading, I was trying to draw on the bond to make them stronger but I-”

“He tried to kill you.”

“He was my parabatai.”

“He was the one who weakened the bond,” Blue says, cold with fury. “By trying to kill you. You didn’t fail to save him. He tried to kill you.”

“And I killed him instead,” Noah whispers, anguished. “I didn’t mean to, I… I didn’t mean to.”

Clary shuts the door.

\---

The visit is going as normally as any foreign Shadowhunter visit ever goes (save Blue’s continued attempts to offend everyone she speaks to, and Ronan knocking out the tooth of an older Shadowhunter who muttered an anti-fey slur at him in passing), until Gansey and Ronan give a combat demonstration.

The combat itself is also as normal as combat ever is. As parabatai they’re matched in skill level, and they make better allies than opponents, both of them able to anticipate the other’s moves with almost startling accuracy. Their demonstration looks more like a choreographed dance than a fight, and doesn’t end until Gansey unbalances Ronan with a feint that throws him off. Gansey looks more surprised than anyone that he’s won, in all honesty - his mouth opens in an O and his eyes shine with the delight of a child seeing Santa for the first time. Ronan grumbles, “I let you win,” and then Gansey kisses him on the mouth.

Maryse gasps. Whether it’s from the blatant affection, the blatant homosexuality, or the blatant disregard for Clave law remains to be seen.

“I thought Gansey and Blue were a thing,” Jace mutters to Clary.

“I thought Blue and Noah were a thing,” Clary mutters back. “Gansey’s pining.”

“I thought Adam and Ronan were a thing?” Isabelle says. “At least, that’s what Alec-”

“They’re parabatai,” Alec says, cutting her off before she can finish her sentence.

They’re all being super obvious about their muttering, especially for anyone with sharpened hearing, but Gansey and Ronan ignore them. Adam elegantly raises the group a middle finger, and Noah buries himself into his sweater, and Blue watches the scene unfold with what looks suspiciously like delight.

“Richard,” Maryse says, her voice strained. “That was an excellent presentation.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Lightwood.” Gansey stands up and stretches. “I get my talent from my mother, you know, she’s quite an incredible woman. Right hand of the High Consul and all.”

“Yes, I imagine she is,” Maryse says after a pause that lasts a million years. “Well. I must excuse myself to go deal with… paperwork.”

No one speaks again until the training room is only populated by the nine of them - the five visitors, and then Isabelle, Jace, Alec, and Clary.

“You can’t fall in love with your parabatai!” Alec says. “Corrupting magic-”

“Well, you’re one to talk,” Blue says. “Anyone with eyes can see you and Jace-”

“Jace is engaged to Clary, and I don’t-”

“Yes, please, let’s have this conversation.” Jace stretches with the same languidness as Gansey, and then drapes himself over Clary’s lap like a very long, very irritating cat. “It’s the most interesting thing happening here.”

“I’m not in love with him,” Ronan says with a dismissive wave.

“Yes, you are.” Gansey pats him on the hand. “It’s all right. If we happen to be corrupted by dark magic, Blue’s family can cleanse us. They’re pretty good at that. In the meantime, I hope Ronan gets corrupted first. I’ve always wanted to know what it’s like to deal with a demon in the bedroom.”

He says it with the air of someone who somehow doesn’t know they’re saying the most scandalous shit imaginable, even though he must, considering who his mother is. A lifetime of learning to speak outside politics and passive aggression has apparently left him with no filter whatsoever. Isabelle grins, delighted. Alec looks like he wants to disappear into the floor.

“What am I?” Blue asks, giving him an affronted look. “An angel?”

Gansey sighs at her, patient and imperious. “You don’t count. You’re not, like, actually evil.”

“We’ll see about that,” Blue mutters.

“So you’re both…” Jace squints, rolling onto his back; Clary lets out a protesting groan as he nearly bowls her flat. “Dating Gansey?”

“We’re all dating each other, pretty much,” Blue says, shrugging. “Except what Adam and I have hasn’t been sexual for a long time. Not as romantic as it used to be either, more queerplatonic? Someone should ask the Clave if that kind of love can cause corruption magic.”

“Also, Blue and I aren’t dating,” Ronan says. “Because, ew.”

“We’re sort of dating,” Blue says. “Like, enemy dating. With no kissing.”

“Or sex,” Ronan says. “Because. Ew.”

“Uh.” Alec stares from face to face. “What.”

“Isabelle.” Blue snaps her attention to Isabelle. “I can’t believe you haven’t told your brother what polyamory is. And when he so obviously wants to date Jace, too.”

“I don’t--!”

Isabelle holds her hands up. “It hasn’t come up!”

“I can’t believe you are letting your brother marinate in pointless gay love triangle angst when he could just-”

“I am not marinating in anything!”

Clary pets Jace’s hair. “In fairness,” she says, “a lot of people who meet Jace want to date him.”

“All the more reason!”

“Polyamory,” Jace repeats. “Are you sure you don’t mean polyarmory, meaning multiple armories stocked with ideal weapons for demon killing?”

“Oh my god.” Blue points at Alec. “Call your boyfriend. Isabelle, call your boyfriend, I’ve see him exactly one time and it’s painfully obvious he has feelings for Clary too. We’re all going out to eat, and I am going to learn you a thing.”


End file.
